Since the construction of the Gezhouba Dam on the Yangtze River in 1981, it has been found that the Chinese Sturgeon, Acipensor sinensis, performs natural propagation annually in a narrow reach downstream close to the Gezhouba Dam site. This might allow one to better investigate the river hydrodynamic conditions of the Chinese Sturgeon spawning ground. In this article, spatial Kinetic Energy Gradient （KEG） and absolute value of vorticity were computed along the river sections from measured data. The relation between Spawn Density per Unit Area （SDUA） and vorticity strength and between SDUA and KEG were worked out. The Results showed that the vorticity and KEG were both effective parameters for describing the hydrodynamic characteristics of Chinese Sturgeon spawning ground. The Chinese Sturgeons prefer to spawn in the river sections where the value of vorticity strength is larger than 0.4 s^-1 and KEG is larger than 0.029 Jkg^-1m^-1.
Channel confluences are universally present in nature. They can be divided into two types： asymmetrical river confluences and symmetric river confluences. The latter is also called as the Y-shaped confluences. Most of previous work has paid more attention to the asymmetrical river confluences, but few studies have been conducted on the Y-shaped confluences. In this article, the effects of bed discordance on the flow patterns at ＂Y＂ shaped open-channel confluences were studied by using a 3-D numerical simulation. It is proved that the model can undertake quantitative assessment of the flow at confluences. The results indicate that there are a lot of differences between the Y-shaped confluence and asymmetrical confluence. The discordant bed height plays an important role at the Y-shaped junction.
